April Update!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 09:49:56 AM
Hey Everyone!
Production Update
Thanks for your patience with the delay in updates as we finalize all of the print files for production. We have been working with a number of printers and manufacturers in multiple countries to make sure all our files are all in order and that the production quality will be excellent. This prepress and sampling process is nearly 100% complete.
We will start manufacturing once the final approval of the production runs are complete to ensure that is everything up to our (and Max's!) standards.
Speaking of which, check out the final approved prototype of the Coin of Wheel and Woa!
Tariff Impact
Regarding the general state of things given recent world economic news, we want this update to be as transparent as possible.
As many of you are well aware there has been a seismic shift in international trade regarding tariffs and general price increases for goods.
If you have not seen our newsletter already let us reiterate that Exalted Funeral is committed to bringing you the best in independent gaming. That includes all of our past commitments and future endeavors. Here is the statement that was sent out:
Art in it's many forms has endured throughout time and has been a voice for those that suffer. Games are indeed a form of art and Exalted Funeral has and will continue to be a conduit for those games and individuals no matter how the landscape appears and changes.
EF has been committed to bringing the best in underground and original games to market. We are throughly pissed off with the ever-changing tariff situation and volatility in our economy but want our fans, family, and friends to know we are working towards bringing home our current obligations and finding solutions for future endeavors so we can continue to bring to the table the best in gaming. The outlook isn’t rosy and the challenges are very real, but who said this was easy? Its not easy for anyone but our resolve is gonna stay.
In light of all this please use your voice to contact your local, state, and national leaders and let them know how you feel.
- Matt, Owner of Exalted Funeral
We as a team have been exploring solutions to these issues and want to let everyone know that the work is being done to keep the games coming. While some items are currently excluded from tariffs, other items we publish as a company and the partners we are working with are not. Our internal pipeline has been disrupted due to this and it is causing our deliverables and timelines to be shifted as well. We are sincerely sorry for the delays.
Regardless of the location where we manufacture, there will not be any additional cost to backers for these items.
What does this mean for the fulfillment timeline?
Once manufacturing is complete and all the products have shipped out, we can provide an estimated time for the shipment to be delivered to our warehouse, but we've seen some slowdowns in port recently as international shipments are arriving and being processed through new customs and tariff processes.
We never want to provide dates to backers that turn out to be wrong, so it is still too early to provide a timeline for fulfillment. Any information we provide before everything gets through customs and delivered to our warehouses is simply an estimate based on the information we have available at the time, and there are still too many variables to make such an estimate right now. We will keep you all informed as we get new information, of course, and will let you know when to expect your rewards as soon as we are able.
Thanks for your patience and support!
-Matt & Cristin, EF Owners
PS: Want to chat about the Abyss or other games, occult shit, and life? Join the Max Moon Games Discord. Want to chat about the Abyss or other games, occult shit, and life? Join the Max Moon Games Discord.
PPS: If you're tired of shaking your fist into the void and are in the US, then shake it at your computer by contacting your representatives!
Final art submitted. The book is finished. Secrets of the Coin of Wheel and Woa!
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jan 08, 2025 at 09:37:23 AM
It is Finished.
Last night I received the final art pieces for Abyss of Hallucinations!
This morning I got up at 4:00 am.
I ate breakfast. Had coffee. And finished the layout.
Abyss of Hallucinations is complete.
Here are a couple of the creature spreads!
We will get the PDFs updated and distributed via Backerkit as soon as we are able.
What is left?
Now it is time to send everything off to print. We will go through the prepress process and ensure everything is set up properly, get samples/proofs, and get the ball rolling on production as fast as we are able.
I still need to update the layout to include the creatures in the Volume 3 zine since that uses a different layout, but that will be fast and those zines will likely be ready much before the books given that it is a lighter production lift.
I also need to update the layout for one last pamphlet, which again will be a lighter lift and ready well before the books.
We are very excited to begin fulfillment as soon as we are able. This all takes time working with the printers and then waiting on shipments. We will keep you posted on timelines as we have them.
Revealed Secrets of the Coin of Wheel and Woa!
I've been holding this secret close for a long time. We told you we would give physical tier backers a ritual coin with a one page guide ... but we took it a bit further. The Coin of Wheel and Woa! includes an embroidered bag to keep your sacred objects out of sight and prevent them from absorbing the taint of light. The one-page ritual guide evolved into a mini-zine that includes both mechanical divination results and non-gaming divination results.
The coin is spun on top of the altar mat using the coin faces and landing location as divination tools. Whether you wish to seek knowledge of your imminent fortune/demise or take great risk in hopes of wild power while playing Mörk Borg, the Coin of Wheel and Woa! awaits your hands.
For those who missed it, the coin is also available as a Backerkit add-on.
Thank you for your patience.
Die daily,
Max Moon
PS: Want to chat about the Abyss or other games, occult shit, and life? Join the Max Moon Games Discord.Want to chat about the Abyss or other games, occult shit, and life? Join the Max Moon Games Discord.
WIP PDF distribution, art sale, Samhain!
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 09:15:01 PM
Let me start by acknowledging that we are in the greatest season there is. The season when our death-obsessed weirdness bubbles up to the top and spills out onto our lawns where we display replicas of the most hideous corpses and feed children mild doses of poison in their presence.
OÍCHE SAMHAIN!
It has been one year since we launched this campaign and we have been working diligently all along the way. I am quite proud of all we have accomplished despite being behind schedule.
Since we are not delivering the physical objects quite yet, we wanted to be sure to mark this anniversary by sharing the WIP PDFs with you.
It is truly amazing to see such wonderful art all compiled together among these pages and I have been on an intensive layout and design journey to constantly be improving, experimenting, and making strange decisions.
There are tons of easter eggs to discover. Some are profound. Some are grotesque. And most are as immature as they are esoteric.
PDF Distribution
We are so excited to send out the following files to you!
WIP Titles:
- Abyss of Hallucinations Collected Edition - WIP
- Abyss of Hallucinations Players Guide - WIP
- Wound of Amfortas Adventure Pamphlet - Ready for Print
- Rebis of Baphomet (Field of Night) Adventure Pamphlet - Ready for Print
Previously Released Titles:
- Abyss of Hallucinations Volume 1
- Abyss of Hallucinations Volume 2
- Map of the Abyss
- Vaults of Eternity Pamphlet
- Megatherion Poster
Download links have been emailed out to everyone, but you can also go directly to your survey in BackerKit to download it as well. Your survey must be locked and your card charged in order to have access to the downloads.
If you have any questions or need help please reach out to us at [email protected].
Production Update
We are in the process of ensuring all files are prepared properly for print and are sending things off to prepress. There are a few things I am still updating from my file loss, but we are so damn close to production that I just can't stand it!
For some items, we are starting to get samples from production. We have the coin and the cassette soundtrack in hand. More on the Coin of Wheel and Woa! in the next update. The cassette includes a set of d66 tables for randomly generating altars in the Abyss. For those of you who have downloaded it on Bandcamp the PDF of the j-card should be in there too.
I can't wait for these updates to shift to just posting more picture of the physical samples and proofs as we go!
Art Sale
I am also hosting an art sale for my dear friend and collaborator, Andy Webber. He has worked on almost everything I have put out and you will find much of his art throughout Abyss of Hallucinations. Here are a few of my favorite pieces.
There are 25 pieces of original artwork available with a wide range of size and price. Everything is 10% off for now.
https://www.maxmoongames.com/product/artbyandywebber/100
By Night,
Max Moon
Disaster, recovery, improvement, and a jeweled toad.
almost 2 years ago
– Thu, Oct 03, 2024 at 02:18:39 PM
Lots has happened since our last update about a month ago. I have fewer teeth, lost files (don't worry), my layout skills continue to improve, and we've got us a damn jeweled toad.
D for Disaster
First, let's talk about lost files. I had a momentary lapse in recklessness. I had been having some weird glitchy shit happen with my computer and so I decided I should back up all my files just in case the worst possible thing could happen. Then I thought, you know what would be terrible? If I lost all my files because I did something weird when backing them up. So I took my computer in to a repair shop and had them do it. Well, all this manifesting abundance shit must have bit me in the ass because they managed to lose all my design files and erased everything on the original drive without checking that the backup worked. The good news is that I had created a backup of my design files back in June. The bad news ... I had about 4 months of work to redo.
So, as I do, I avoided it for a minute, had a meltdown and then kicked myself in the ass and got to work. What happened next was great. I have become much better at layout over the course of this project and was able to fix a lot of things that I had already resigned myself to keeping. Since I was forced to redo work, I decided to redo it better than what was lost.
I put in a massive amount of work over the last month and I am caught back up. I am tired but I am pleased.
The books will be ready to go to pre-press in the next couple of weeks as our last pieces of artwork come in. At that time we will send out the PDFs for all of the items that are complete, including previously released titles. I am so proud of the work that has been accomplished so far and I cannot wait to get these into your hands.
JEWELED TOAD
I also just have to share this new illustration from David Hoskins, the Jeweled Toad! Look at this warty creep!
GM SCREEN
Oh and did I show you the GM screen last time? I don't remember. If I did, that was one of the things that was lost and had to be redone better. So here is a screenshot!
JOIN US ON DISCORD
I have also been running biweekly games of Abyss of Hallucinations in my Discord server. Since there are more people who want to play than I can handle, we also have some folks who are planning to run additional Abyss games in the not too distant future. So come on over, show us your left hand, and say hello.
The games have been as fun as they have been disgusting.
The current crew just wrapped up a quest for Babalon who approached them riding upon a horde of worms emerging from the Great Sea to task them with finding her burial silks in the Troubled Sacrarium of Begetting deep within the hills of the Brocken.
Getting there involved a lot of hunting and corpse crafting, but they found the silks, slaughtered some overly procreative pilgrims, and made a spider cart out of corpses and eyeballs ... and their new cart can climb. And I think they have all developed a deep-seated phobia of the Field of Night.
Did you want to know more about my teeth?
I consider myself to have luck like the moods of Robert Smith. So many wonderful things happen to me. But also shit like breaking my tooth on a pepper seed in chili flakes I had put on my pizza. Full on broken. Had to have it removed and start the process for getting an implant. Painful and expensive, but now I have a terrible tooth that I am thinking about making a box for and writing up stats for as a cursed item.
By Night,
Max Moon
Getting closer but a bit behind, drop-in games in Discord, Coin & GM screen update
almost 2 years ago
– Tue, Sep 03, 2024 at 09:40:34 AM
First, let me acknowledge my hubris for thinking that moving was not going to impact things so much. I moved a month and a half ago and though I am no longer pulling extremely late nights and early mornings, I am still cramming things in to all my waking hours. Having the whole family get Covid while we were moving definitely made shit harder ... but more than that was just my own over-assumptions of what I could handle and get done.
So yes, we are behind schedule, and yes, this will impact delivery. We won't make our expected October delivery date. I will be working with the Exalted Funeral crew to work on getting you all a new ETA for this project.
While we are still waiting on just a few art pieces to come in for the core book, I am going to be using that time to polish up layout and design work and get a bit more feedback from folks who have a keener eye for detail than I do.
The Coin of Wheel and Woa!
The coin ended up being massively more work than we expected. Mostly because the folks producing it just couldn't quite get a sculpt looking like we wanted so there was tons of back and forth. On the plus side, this resulted in us hiring a sculptor and the results are so much better than we had originally planned. I am so much more excited about this than I originally was! This thing is going to be a hefty metal coin! Imagine this in gold.
We originally planned just to create the coin, but since working on this it was too good to just leave it alone. I wrote up a ritual for use with both in-game mechanical results and out-of-game divinatory use. So after being a huge headache, everything with the coin is done and looking amazing.
GM Screen
I wrapped up the GM screen design and printed out pages to create a personal prototype for using while running games in the Abyss. I am still playing around with where I am placing the license info.
Discord Server
I have started running a drop-in game of Abyss of Hallucinations in the Max Moon Games Discord server. The first session was this past Thursday evening, and while everyone managed to get a character through the Unicursal Heptagram, I think we had only 2/5 of the starting characters survive, but I have to commend them on their brilliant problem-solving! It was horribly lovely way to spend an evening and I can't wait to do it again soon.
What's Left?
- Fine-tune some minor layout and design improvements.
- Plug in the final art pieces to the core book.
- Review the player's guide and volume 3 zine files.
- Finish layout on final two pamphlets.
- Send off all files to prepress and move toward production.
- Print and assemble the cursed editions of Volume 3.
So, not much! That being said, there is lots of room for things to get slowed down again once things are out of our hands.
I am grateful for all your support and all of your patience. This project is a new scale for me and without the help of Exalted Funeral and especially you all, this wouldn't be possible.
I'll end this update with the line from Book of Lies that has been meandering through my head each day lately:
"It is not necessary to understand, it is enough to adore."
I hope you all find some time to play and swim in the shadows.
By Night,
Max Moon
